Have yourself a mindful morning
Many of us often feel that our mornings slip away without accomplishing much. Laura Vanderkam acknowledges this state of helplessness, where we have our sights on the clock but tackle less essential activities, sidelining the important stuff.
Drawing from her personal experience, Laura Vanderkam cites the challenges she faces every morning while juggling her responsibilities as a mother and creating the right state of mind for the workday. Like her, we encounter the same problems daily. It is one thing to be out of bed early and another — to find a way around the numerous hurdles we might face before we start working. Even when we eventually get ourselves to work in one piece, it is common to waste time on less relevant tasks, like replying to emails or looking through shallow content online.
Instead of subjecting our mornings to mindless tasks, Laura Vanderkam lists three categories of activities that should define our mornings:
• Cultivate your career by optimizing morning culture.
• Engage yourself in activities we owe our family beyond the primary personal care.
• Seclude yourself to enjoy your hobby, meditate, workout, or pray.
Regardless of the combination of these options, this time frame is our “me time.” It goes a long way to defining our output.
When we stick to active early morning schedules, we will discover that our mornings can defy the chaos and unproductivity tags we give them.
More importantly, the most successful people know the essence of having a productive morning. To underpin this point, Laura Vanderkam highlights the examples of prominent individuals with morning habits that have seemingly propelled their high–achieving status. One of such individuals is Steve Reinemund, PepsiCoʼs former CEO/Chairman. He starts his day doing a four–mile run on a treadmill by 5:00 a.m., after which he embarks on a culmination of activities ranging from reading to praying or meditating.
Keep in mind that your morning rituals shouldn’t be of the self–flagellation variety. Choose things you actually enjoy.
There are many people who try to develop a routine but are unable to sustain it. The truth is that you can overcome that problem of inconsistency. The following chapters show how you can develop the willpower you need to pull this off.
Your willpower is strongest in the morning time
Successful people divide their days into activities. Moreover, they know that morning is the most productive part of the day. In the lead–up to establishing the role of discipline in creating productive mornings, Laura Vanderkam outlined several factors in her daily routines that could derail her desired daily outputs.
It is difficult to replicate the same level of zeal and willpower that drives our mornings for our afternoon tasks.
Conventional workers schedule their evenings for workout sessions. In most cases, it is difficult to make out time for this, especially when deadlines are looming and your nagging boss is at your throat. Instead, people that are serious about working out do so early in the morning. This resolve takes discipline, as only the disciplined would defy morning madcaps.
Furthermore, Laura Vanderkam backs up the role of willpower by citing the research of Florida State University psychology professor Roy F. Baumeister. Professor Baumeister studied self–discipline and came to the conclusion that willpower drops as tiredness rises. To compare, think about how our muscles are also susceptible to fatigue. Therefore, our willpower decreases during the day.
Perhaps, you see a parallel between those impulsive lapses that are more common later in the day. If you are keeping to the diet, it is easier to refrain from eating things you shouldn't in the morning. Yet, in the evening, you start cutting yourself slack. Also, a Twitter analysis shows that people tend to use optimistic phrases in the wee hours of the day.
In other words, our capacity to make the right decisions would naturally reduce as we take on more tasks. And so, it is safe to say that morning is the time when our willpower is intact and fresh. We can take advantage of this by allocating self–reflective, critical, and body–rejuvenating tasks to these hours. Our inability to do this means that we would subject our willpower to chaotic schedules or activities that do not add value to our day.
Like our muscles, we can also develop our willpower. Just as a bodybuilder takes the pain to bulk up and then maintain it, it is also possible to nurture self–discipline. Once we get to this level, it becomes easier to take on early morning productive activities since they are now part of our habits. More so, accomplishing them will no more require a strain on our willpower.
For instance, brushing our teeth is an early morning ritual, and we do not need an extra push to get this done. This example highlights why we need to adopt proper morning rituals that would normally require an astounding amount of willpower.
Begin your day by prioritizing the most important tasks and executing them
For many, morning routines feel fixed: waking and cleaning up, making breakfast, getting ready, and going to work. This routine does not have to be your reality. You can reorder your mornings to invest time in doing things that are important rather than urgent.
Forget waiting for the perfect moment to do an important task. Get it done now.
Some tasks are obligatory, but they don’t add overall value to your day or life. Home chores, laundry, mowing the lawn are things that can easily divert your attention from what matters to you. These tasks feel urgent, and so you postpone the important but not so urgent task.
James Citrin, the leader of the headhunting agency Spencer Stuart’s North American Board and CEO Practice, states that we should invest our mornings in critical tasks. He works out in the morning hours himself, waking up before 6 a.m. every day. Moreover, 18 out of his highflier executives also wake up that early to engage in essential activities.
Worthwhile to do in the morning are career development, self–care, and family nurturing activities.
Non–urgent but important activities require extra motivation to perform. They are things like keeping fit, writing a book, meditation, etc. These activities have the potential to change your life in the long run.
The most successful people use their mornings to develop any of these three things: their careers, relationships, or themselves.
Let’s take your career, for example. To build your career, you need to spend time on activities that you can’t usually attend to in your day. This does not include responding to emails, as you can do that later.
Debbie Moysychyn is an Organizational Health Care Executive who is building the health care education department of Brand University. In a bid to promote a culture of collaboration, she literally keeps her door open and tells people that they can come to her at any time. The problem was that there were too many meetings every day, leaving her no time to work on her projects. So, she decided to dedicate her mornings to them. During this time of the day, she didn’t need to worry about interruptions. On top of that, she spent the rest of the day building the office culture without hurting her projects.
Make it your habit to spend mornings on self–care and quality time with your family
Apart from your career, your relationship is another pillar that supports a fulfilling life. However, by the time you return from work, you may be too tired to spend quality time with the people you love. Hence, you need to learn how to use your mornings to build your relationships.
In the mornings, you will have the energy to be with the ones you love. How can you make this work?
Early in the morning, you can have good quality sex with your partner. This will be more satisfying than trying to make things work at night when you are tired from the day’s work. As a family, you can make breakfast the time to have everyone in the same place. Whatever your situation is, coming up with a strategy that allows you to use your mornings to build your relationships is essential. Kathryn Beaumont Murphy, a counsel at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP, discovered that working late nights as a busy tax lawyer kept her from spending time with her daughter.
She talked with Laura Vanderkam, who helped her realize that her law firm didn’t emphasize starting work early. Instead, the law firm rewarded late working hours. Beaumont changed her routine. To get more morning hours, she would go to bed earlier than usual. This new arrangement influenced the whole family. Everyone woke up early for the family “breakfast special.”
Career and family are two pillars that uphold a fulfilling life. The third pillar is personal development.
In the morning, create time to care for yourself.
Self–care is the first to give whenever our responsibilities and commitments become more than we bargained for. When there is a mountain of work for you to do, you begin to deprive yourself of sleep and the rest you need just to meet deadlines.
To practice self–care, you need to identify what you want. Is it keeping fit, writing, reading, meditation, or praying? You can do anything you want to care for yourself by getting out of bed early and making time for these things.
Did you know? A 2011 poll by the National Sleep Foundation revealed that though an average person aged 30–45 wakes up by 5:59 a.m., they still don’t start their official duties until 8:00 or 9:00 a.m.
Keep track of time and visualize your ideal morning to achieve the transformation of your morning routine
It is time to walk the walk. There are 5 things you need to do to bring about a change in routine. This chapter addresses 2, while the 3 other steps are captured in the next chapter.
Keep records
How do you spend your time over the week? There are 168 hours each week. You need to learn how to account for each hour. You'll find it easier to learn how to make better use of your time. The focus is not just on your mornings. What you do with the rest of the day also counts.
Recording how you spend your time will help you to learn which activities to stop. This way, you will spare the time for the activities that matter.
If you want to maximize your mornings, you must know that you cannot continue to keep late nights. Since you cannot extend each day's length, you should know that something has to give.
Visualize your ideal morning
For the Laura Vanderkam, a perfect morning means waking up at 6:20 a.m. except for times when she feels like having sex in the wee hours of the morning. She goes for her 45–minute run by 6.30 a.m
You need to picture your ideal morning first and then start bringing it to life.
Then she spends quality time with her family. They do this over breakfast, where everybody gathers around the table. She dedicates the rest of the morning to writing her book and an entry for her blog.
Do a reality check on the routine you visualized and start bringing it to life
So far, you've tracked your time for the week and come up with a mental picture of a good morning. It is time to see if you can give this picture life.
To figure out the logistics, you need to answer the following questions:
• How much time do you need to create this ideal routine?
• What changes can you make to realize this dream?
If you want to cook in the morning, for example, you may need to wake up earlier. That means you can no longer keep late nights.
A well worked out plan has a higher chance of success, so be very precise about what you want to do in the morning.
Focus on making your morning rituals easier
As you have developed a clear picture of what you want to integrate into your morning schedule, you need to implement it. Often, the “how” or the logistics hold us back and, instead of improving our lives, we start producing excuses. Here, we resist change in the first place. You can overcome this by thinking about the practical ways to fast–track the process.
Develop the habit
Laura Vanderkam advises that it is easier when we adopt one habit at a time, as it involves rechanneling our morning energy into productive yet new activities. Also, we should track our progress, as it takes a while before these activities become part and parcel of our mornings. There is a trick to learning the new habit faster: make it an enjoyable one. If you wake up to do something you like, your motivation to get out of bed will rise exponentially as soon as you do. Moreover, always reward yourself as you succeed in building new habits. A treat can be anything you like: delicious food, new clothes, etc.
Tune Up as necessary
Do not box yourself into thinking that your morning rituals must remain the same. You could, instead, adjust them to conform to the reality of your new job, location, status, or responsibilities. The most crucial thing is that you are making the best use of your mornings.
There should be room for unexpected events. Life is full of those. It is very easy to toss your ideal routine in the trash if things keep popping up to disrupt it. Hence, your contingencies must have contingencies.
Once things become habitual, they operate as automatic processes, which consume less willpower.
For Laura Vanderkam, her love for running had to be suspended when she was carrying her first daughter. She decided to spend that running time on other self–nurturing activities. She's no longer a nursing mother. She has returned to her 45–minute run. These adjustments and readjustments can happen from time to time. Make room for them.
Conclusions
Many of us believe that sleeping longer in the morning will help us be more productive during the day because more sleep equals more strength. It is hard to overlook the importance of rest, and sleeping is the best way to do that. However, we get this idea wrong. What we need to do is go to bed early and get up early. Why?
The morning is when we reach our peak productivity. Still on the brink of our subconscious, our creativity level is very high. For sure, it is difficult to change our ways to appreciate the beauty of the morning, but it is so worthwhile!
Dedicate your morning to the activities that will help you grow professionally, personally and improve your relationships with loved ones. The key point here is not to postpone these until later in the day, or worse still — the evening when we are utterly exhausted from the day’s work and sometimes literally feel numb.
Adopt several important morning routines like meditating or working out, spending quality time with your family over breakfast, or reading up on the newest trends in your professional sphere. In the morning, our willpower is also much stronger than it is in the evening. Thus, the wee hours of the morning are the best time to start gradually improving your life.
Try this
Sometimes, when asked what we did during the week, we can answer one thing: worked. In fact, we do much more than that, but other activities slip beyond the scope of our awareness.
• For one week, try to record everything you do during the day as per hour. Of course, you don’t need to calculate the minutes. Estimate the time roughly.
• As you are done with your list, sort the activities into important and unimportant ones.
• Try to cut the time you spend on the unimportant ones to make room for the other group.
This way, you will feel better about yourself and eager to wake every morning to the new day.
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